[ RadSafe ] Thorium in gas lamps

[GRAHNk at comcast.net]

This diverges from the original question, but if you're looking for current radioactive mantles, I bought half a dozen in November at an ACE hardware store in Iron River Michigan.  The brand was Paulin.  This is a small obscure brand and is one of the last manufacturers of fixed propane gas lamps for hunting cabins and other places without electricity.  They contain radioactive material and have a warning about inhaling or ingesting the ash.  The rigid mantles sold by American Wick, in Morris IL (manufactured in Malta) also have radioactive material in them and contain a similar warning.  I've also purchased the Century and Primus brands at Walmart and KMart and they contained radioactive material about 2 years ago.  

The Paulin products are available in the Lehmans Non Electric mail order catalog http://www.lehmans.com/ which once was targeted toward the Amish but is now got a much larger audience interested in "simple living".  

We have some old historical ones here associated with the project, they are the larger, rigid ones, on a clay base associated with street lights and they have lots of daughter ingrowth.

Kelly Grahn
Illinois Emergency Management Agency, Div of Nuclear Safety
West Chicago Field Office 
(Kerr McGee Rare Earths Facility Remediation Proj, manufactured mantles)
grahn at iema.state.il.us

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: "Syd H. Levine" <syd.levine at mindspring.com> 

> None, or very, very little in the mantles being sold these days. For awhile 
> the off-brand ones sold in Wal-Mart and elsewhere still contained Thorium 
> even after it was removed from the Coleman products, but I believe even 
> those have disappeared now. It's a shame since they made really nice check 
> sources. They still show up on eBay as check sources from time to time. 
> 
> Syd H. Levine 
> AnaLog Services, Inc. 
> Phone: (270) 276-5671 
> Telefax: (270) 276-5588 
> E-mail: analog at logwell.com 
> Web URL: www.logwell.com 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Mark Sonter" 
> To: 
> Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 6:01 PM 
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] Thorium in gas lamps 
> 
> 
> > Does anyone out there in Radsafeland know roughly how much thorium is in a 
> > Coleman or similar lamp mantle? 
> > 
> > Mark Sonter 
> > 
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